“Thank God.”
Len’s back ached and his bladder was uncomfortably full. Gently, he shifted out from under her, lowering her head to rest against the floor. Amazingly, she stayed asleep.
Len smiled at Jessie and raised his finger to his lips, and together they snuck out of the bedroom.
That evening, before bed, Len took Emma’s blanket from her crib. Then he lay down on the carpet again, spreading it over his legs. He pulled Emma over so that she sat beside him.
“Daddy,” Jessie looked at him in surprise. “Are you gonna sleep on the floor again? What about books?”
“We’ll read books in a minute,” he said. “Just wait. I want to show Emma something.”
He pushed the blanket down so that it bunched around his ankles. Then he wrapped his arms around himself and shivered.
“Brrr! I’m cold,” he said. “So, I reach down, grab the blanket, and pull it over me.”
Jessie watched his pantomime with wide eyes. When he had pulled the blanket up to his chin and lowered himself back to the floor, she spoke up.
“I want to do it. Can I do it?”
She sat down on the other side of him and pretended to shiver, then pulled the blanket up around her.
“See, Daddy. I can do it.”
Len sighed; Emma had crawled under the crib. “Yes, I see you can. But you’re not the one waking up in the middle of the night because you’re cold.”
Jessie was quiet for a moment, still snuggled under the blanket.
“Maybe she’s not cold, Daddy,” she said at last. “Maybe she misses Mommy. Sometimes I miss Mommy and I cry.”
Len looked at his daughter. “You do?”
“Yes.” Jessie stared at him intently.
“Well,” Len said finally, “you’ll see her soon. And I’m here.”
Jessie nodded. “I know. But sometimes I still feel the cry.”
Len frowned. “I don’t hear you crying, Jessie.”
“I hold it in.”
“Oh, Jessie. You don’t have to do that. You can cry. It’s okay.”
“When Emma cries, you look so sad.”
“Do I?”
Jessie nodded.
“I’m not sad because she’s crying, Jessie. Sometimes, I’m . . . I’m just tired, is all. I probably just look tired.”
“You look sad.”
Len smiled. “Well, I’m not sad, okay? And it’s fine if you cry. We all need to cry sometimes.”
“Even you?”
“Yes.”
“Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Do you hold in the cry, ever?”
He looked at Jessie’s serious face. “I guess I do, sometimes.”
“So we’re just the same, Daddy.”
“Yes. But I’m a grown-up. Sometimes grown-ups have to hold in their cries.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Because we have responsibilities. We have to go to work. And take care of our kids. But you’re a little girl. You don’t have to hold it in.”
“I know.” But Len could tell by her face that she was not convinced.
“Look, Jessie. Next time I feel like crying, I won’t hold it in, okay? And you do the same.”
“Even if we’re in the grocery store?”
“Even then.” He grinned. “I don’t know what people will think, though, when they see me crying in the grocery store.”
Jessie smiled. “Maybe a lady will give you a lollipop, too, Daddy.” She paused. “Can we read books here tonight, Daddy? I like it on the floor. It’s cozy.”
CHAPTER 15
Len
Summer came, and with it, the fog. The days hardly grew warmer, but the light lasted longer, and people’s spirits rose. For Len, everything felt easier. There was one fewer class to teach, and all were during the day. The evenings were so long now that often after dinner he got out the stroller and they went for a walk. There was no playground near the campus, but it didn’t matter. There was a long stretch of grass in front of the main library where the girls could play. Emma was walking in earnest now, and the closely cut lawn was perfect; she never cried when she fell.
Sometimes, Len would try to lie down in the grass while they played, gazing up through the misty air, or letting his eyes close, just for a moment. But Jessie would not stand for that.
“Come chase me,” she would call to him. Or, “Fly eagle!” She would come and pull off his shoes and struggle to lift his feet to her belly.
“Come on, Daddy. Help. Your feet are too heavy.”
Still lying on his back, he would fit his feet against her waist and, reaching for her hands to steady her, he would push her up into the air. “Fly eagle!” he would say, gently rocking her back and forth.
Emma liked to fly eagle, too, but he always kept hold of her hands. With Jessie, he could let go after a while and she would spread her arms wide.
“Look at me, Emma! I’m flying!”
They were flying eagle one Wednesday evening, Jessie suspended above him against the gray sky, when she suddenly dropped her arms and clutched at his hands.
“Daddy, get me down! I see Sarah!”
When Len had brought Jessie to the ground and pushed himself up to sitting, he saw her, too. Sarah was walking across the grass toward them, smiling and waving at the girls. They ran to her, Emma teetering a little on her chubby legs.
Sarah reached down and scooped Emma up before she fell, while Jessie did a little skip of delight in front of her.
“I was flying eagle, Sarah!”
“I saw that,” Sarah said, grinning at her. “And I said to myself, ‘What a beautiful family.’ And then I realized, ‘I know that family.’”
“And it was us?”
“It was you.” She smiled broadly at Len and gently set Emma down. “They’re getting so big, aren’t they?”
Len nodded. Sarah had been watching the girls in the afternoon for almost four months now, and yet still Len could not stop the flutter of nerves he felt in her presence. He did not wholly understand it. For a while, he had thought it was simply the knowledge of all that she had seen, and that the unsettled feeling was just the remnants of his shame. But as the weeks passed, his disquiet had persisted.
Sarah was just so, so . . . so what? So perfect, was the word that came to mind. And she was, really; she was the perfect nanny. He looked forward to coming home every afternoon. The apartment was always tidy, although he had told her more than once not to worry about the mess, that he wasn’t paying her to clean.
“Oh, I’m not worried,” she had answered. “But the girls should learn to pick up after themselves.”
For the first few days, he had scooped up Emma as soon as he came home and headed to the changing table. He did it out of habit; Laurel had never changed Emma’s diaper if she expected him home. “I change enough diapers,” she would say. “It’s your turn.”
But now Emma was always dry in the afternoons, and just that little thing—what a relief it was! Because now he didn’t have to interrupt her if she was playing happily; even better, the evening didn’t begin with tears.
“You can’t believe how wonderful—” he had started to gush to Sarah once, but she had given him a look that silenced him, and he had understood. If the baby’s diaper was wet, of course she would change it. There was nothing remarkable in that.
But Sarah was remarkable nonetheless, even though he soon learned that she grew uncomfortable if he said it. There was a fresh efficiency to her. She didn’t bustle, like Margie did, or at least he never saw her. But the girls, when he opened the door each afternoon, were as neat as the apartment, their faces and clothes clean. He didn’t know how she did it. On the weekends, when it was just him, the apartment would be in shambles by evening, the floor littered with books and toys. The girls’ bath at the end of those days was a satisfaction—to scrub the grime from their faces and the dirt from their feet. On weekdays, when they had been with Sarah, they hardly seemed to need a bath at all.<
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Sarah made it seem so easy. Len felt blundering in comparison. He had wondered once or twice if Jessie had told Sarah about the disastrous chicken; his face burned just thinking of it.
But—he was doing, okay, wasn’t he? He made sure the girls ate their breakfast. He got them dressed and brushed their teeth before they left the house each morning. And if he didn’t fix their hair as Margie had, at least he pinned it back with a barrette, to keep it out of their faces.
He looked at Jessie now and saw that her barrette had come loose. It dangled from a strand of hair at the side of her face.
“Come here, Jessie,” he said, patting his lap. “Let me fix your barrette for you.”
But she just tugged it out and held it in her little fist, still beaming with the excitement of seeing Sarah here.
“No thank you,” she said, tossing it at him. Then she took off running down the grass. “I don’t need a barrette!”
Len didn’t want to scold her. And she was right: she didn’t need it. As she ran, the wind pushed her long hair back, so that it seemed to float on either side of her. Jessie turned and raced back toward them, her face so full of concentration and triumph that he and Sarah both laughed.
“You have beautiful girls,” Sarah said. “Both of them.” She tousled Emma’s hair.
Len smiled. He felt his pride in his daughters well up in him so that he was brimming with it. He looked away, suddenly shy that Sarah would see it, that she, like Laurel, might find something laughable in it, something trite. But when he snuck a look at her face, she was watching Emma, smiling, and he let out his breath and held his arms open wide for Jessie, laughing as she barreled into him. His beautiful girls.
Something shifted between Len and Sarah after that evening in the quad. There was a new ease in their interactions, a lightheartedness that hadn’t been there before. Len felt his shame lifting, and with it, the disquiet he had always felt in her presence. He found himself looking forward to seeing her when he got home. She would always ask politely about his day. If he shared a little, just to get it off his chest, she listened to him with the same attentive patience that she gave the girls. She talked to him more now, too, telling him about her afternoon with the girls as she gathered her things, while Jessie listened as rapt as he to hear how she would tell it. She spoke with fondness of his daughters, laughing at the funny things they had done or said, and it was a pleasure for him, not to be so alone in his delight in them.
One Friday, on impulse, he tried to get Sarah to linger a bit, offering her a glass of wine.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” she said, glancing at her watch. But he sensed that her refusal wasn’t wholehearted, and he quickly got out two glasses and poured the wine.
“Consider it a shift drink,” he said, handing one to her.
But it didn’t go well. Len had not considered how jittery with anticipation Jessie would be; she and Emma spent Saturday mornings with their mother. He pulled out coloring books and crayons, trying to get her engaged in something, so that he could sip his wine and talk to Sarah. But Jessie kept pointing at the clock.
“When do we go to Mommy’s house?”
“Not until tomorrow, sweetheart.”
“When’s tomorrow?”
“Well, you’ll go to bed. And when you wake up, it will be tomorrow.”
“Is it bedtime yet?”
“Not yet.”
“When is bedtime?”
“Well, first we have to have dinner. Then take a bath. Brush our teeth. Why don’t you color a little so I can talk to Sarah for a bit?”
Jessie frowned. “Isn’t it time for dinner?”
Len looked at the clock. She was right; it was dinnertime. He sighed. Was it too much to ask for? Ten minutes—five—to have a glass of wine with another grown-up?
Sarah shifted in her seat. She took a final sip of wine and set her glass, still half full, on the table. She stood up, smiling at him with half her mouth, as if in sympathy, as if she had guessed how much he wanted this.
“I think it’s time for me to go,” she said. She knelt and gave Jessie a quick hug. “So you three can have your dinner.”
The next morning after breakfast, he took the girls to Laurel’s. Len always drove them to the house. He didn’t want Laurel to come to his apartment. Despite its Spartan ugliness, Len felt a growing fondness for the place; it had become a haven to him. He didn’t want to hear the cutting remarks Laurel would undoubtedly make if she saw it. He didn’t want her taint on it.
Home again without his daughters, Len felt a little guilty about how much he enjoyed his Saturday mornings alone. He would pour himself another cup of coffee and read the paper while he drank it, savoring every sip. When he was finished, he would spend a little while cleaning, relishing the pleasure of completing a task uninterrupted, the quiet of the house. Afterwards, he would go for a run, or work for a while, or perhaps go to the grocery store, just for the ease of doing it without the girls in tow. He relished the lunch he made for himself at noon, how simple it was to feed only himself, how relaxing to sit at the table and eat without once having to get up, the order of the kitchen barely disturbed.
The Saturday visits didn’t last long; Laurel always wanted him to pick up the girls before nap time.
“I don’t have a crib anymore,” she had said, with a note of accusation that Len ignored. “Where would Emma sleep?”
Len suspected that it wasn’t just that, but he didn’t say anything. If Laurel felt guilty for the afternoon when Jessie had wandered away—well, she should. And he was always happy to have the girls home for Saturday naps. They slept heavily, as if the visits there took it out of them. And it meant that Saturday afternoons had a sweetness to them, with all of Sunday together stretching out before them. And even though Len luxuriated in every quiet moment of their absence, when he saw his daughters again, that familiar joy filled him, and the loss of tranquility seemed a small, small price to pay for such happiness.
CHAPTER 16
Len
The summer light deepened; the evenings were not so long. If they walked to campus after dinner, it was twilight already when they got home. One evening, after putting the girls to bed, Len was sitting on the tiny porch when he heard the phone ring. He ignored it at first, watching the last of the summer fog rolling into the yard. The ringing stopped, then seconds later began again, persistent. Len roused himself and went inside to answer it.
It was Laurel. Did he have a minute? she asked. She had news.
Len leaned against the wall and closed his eyes.
“Well?”
“I just thought you should know. I’m putting the house on the market.”
Len opened his eyes. “Why?”
“I’m moving.”
“Oh,” he said, feeling his annoyance rise. Of course she was moving if she was selling the house. “To where?” he asked, keeping his voice even.
“Ashland.”
The name sounded familiar, but he couldn’t place it. “Where’s that?”
“It’s small. Near Jacksonville.”
“Florida?”
He heard the shrill peal of Laurel’s laughter. “Not Florida. Oregon.”
“Oregon! But what . . . what about the girls?”
For a moment, there was silence on the line. “I’m not the custodial parent, Len,” she said at last.
“Yes, but . . . But that doesn’t mean . . . I never thought you wouldn’t want to see them.”
“Len, it’s Oregon, not China. It’s just over the state line. I can still visit. They can visit.”
“But it’ll make it harder, won’t it?”
Again, the peal of laughter. “Divorce does that, doesn’t it?” She sounded almost gleeful, as if at last she had found a way to peg this all on him. She would consider herself free to move wherever she wanted, no matter what that meant for the girls. And in her mind, he would carry the blame, for it was he who had wanted the divorce, he who had asked for custody.
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��So you’ll keep seeing them on Saturdays?” he asked. “But where? I’m not going to take them all the way to—”
“Well, that’s why I wanted to talk to you,” Laurel interrupted him. “I’m going to have to skip a couple of weeks, I think. Just while I move. Get settled in.”
Len’s heart fell. A couple of weeks. To Jessie it might as well be a year. Already she didn’t understand what “the weekend” meant, asking every evening when they would go to Mommy’s house, how many days, how many times she would have to go to bed and wake up again before Saturday came.
“Laurel,” he said at last. “Think about Jessie. This will be very hard on her.”
“I can’t imagine it will be any harder than suddenly not living with her mother.”
Len said nothing. Again, silence descended on the line.
“Well,” he said at last. “I guess you’ve made up your mind.”
“Len, I had to,” she said quickly. “I mean, it wasn’t my idea. But . . . Kent is moving. He’s signing on with a builder there. It’s a good opportunity for him.”
“Kent.” It was the first time Laurel had spoken his name to him; Len’s stomach turned over to hear it. “And you’re going with him. With Kent.”
“Yes.” Her voice turned petulant. “Why shouldn’t I get to be happy, Len? You have the girls. I have nothing.”
He sighed. “Laurel, you gave me custody. I didn’t force you.”
He could hear her crying.
“Well,” he said at last. “I hope it works out for you. I hope you’re . . . happy.”
“You do?”
“Yes,” he responded automatically, but once he had said it, he knew he had spoken sincerely. He wished Laurel no ill, but he doubted she would ever be rid of the discontent that hounded her. He had spent years trying to make her happy, but he was free of that now, and the relief of it made him beneficent.
“Yes,” he said again. “I really do hope you’ll be happy.” He paused, unsure of what more to say. “Good luck,” he said at last.
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